Define physical and logical data independence. How does this architecture help in achieving these?
Data independence entails that change in one view must not need a change in the view(s) above. There are two sorts of data independence: logical and physical. The meaning of Logical data independence is that the conceptual view can be changed without influencing the existing external view, that is a given record may be spilt or combined along with other records but the external views need not be modified to reflect this. The meaning of Physical data independence is that the physical storage structures or devices employed to store the data can be changed without effecting the existing conceptual view or external view, that is if earlier indexed sequential files are employed to store data and then the B- trees are used, even then the upper layers must not be effected.